"We're going to look back on the emergence of DIY biology like we look back on the emergence of personal computers in the late 1970s. Biopunk is a vivid, real-time snapshot of the people and projects that will drive the next explosion of innovation in genetics, food, and health."
-John Wilbanks, vice president for Science at Creative Commons

While I was looking for a topic for my final blog entry I came across a book review of “Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life” by Marcus Wohlsen. What first seemed to be a little off topic, soon turned out to be very relevant to the big questions of the ICC course, like how do humans make sense of the world?

Biopunk is a movement that intends to make bio technology, like genetic engineering, accessible to a wider crowd of “citizen scientists” and “do-it-yourself bio engineers”. Calling themselves bio-hackers, the contributors are the equivalent to computer hackers only that they work with biological software, the genome. Punk ethics have always meant more than just sporting funny haircuts and adhering to a certain dress code. Do it yourself, the idea that it’s best to be as self-reliable as possible has also been an important part. Instead of sowing workshops or vegan kitchen, biohackers, inspired by this DIY mentality, set up community laboratories or promote the access to cheaper tools for home experiments. According to the influential physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, Biotech is going to be for the 21^st century what Physics and Computer Sciences have been for the 20^th century. He states that biology is already a bigger field than physics, measured in workforce and budgets and that it is only a matter of time until the same happens in biotech as it happened in the development of computers. Genetic engineering is seen today like the computer sciences have been in the beginning when computers with the processing power of a modern pocket calculator filled a whole warehouse. Dyson predicts that biotech is likewise becoming “small and domesticated” instead of being a huge centralized colossus.

At the moment the technology is still in the beginnings but the ambitions of the biohackers are high. There are already people out there experimenting, like the MIT student Kay Aull who home-developed a genetic testing kit for a disease that was hereditary in her family. Or why don't you go ahead and follow the 5 minutes instructions from a different biohacker to extract some of your DNA in a shot-glass! http://www.instructables.com/id/5-minute-DNA-Extraction-in-a-Shot-Glass/ Do it yourself! (You won't be able to clone yourself anytime soon though...)

One of the hackers main goals is free access to information and there are attempts to keep biotech as open as possible. One example is BiOS, (Biological Open Source/Biological Innovation for Open Society) which aims at incorporating the principles of open source into biotech. Instead of patenting everything, their goal is it to keep the “source code” freely accessible so that others can help improving the developments.    

Much of the biopunk movement is still playing around. Yet, what seemed to be science fiction rapidly becomes reality. In his book, Wohlsen comes to the conclusion that biohackers still have a long way to go and might not ever come up with anything a multi-billion dollar company could not do. Yet, the questions they raise are already of great importance. Can the human genome be patented or should everyone be able to have access to genetic information? And should there be a control instance when playing around with life?

Like so many other human developments, the question is whether we will use it for the good or the bad. It just becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two sides. Where on the scale would you put Alba, the (real!) “glowing” bunny co-created by the artist Eduardo Kac?

Read/listen on or get involved:

http://www.bu.edu/wbur/storage/2009/06/hereandnow_0616_4.mp3 -Kay Aull about her home lab

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/646 (Long!) -MIT talk about DIY biology

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37444/page1/ -Review of Marcus Wohlsens book

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jul/19/our-biotech-future/ -Freeman Dyson about our Biotech Future

http://diybio.org/ -DIY bio organization

http://genspace.org/ -Community Lab in NYC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopunk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIYbio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohacker

Long list but isn't it just too interesting?